Feels like it’s been a hundred years since I threw something up here. Rest assured I carry the shame of an un-updated blog around with me constantly, so – yay, guilt. I’m actually taking intensive classes in Chinese (yet again) to push my reading level higher, hence the lack of posts. I’m more active on here when I’m not studying anywhere else. Anyhoo, this is another one I nabbed from Sina user Zifengling’s personal blog. I tried to convince myself that this was beginner, but I just couldn’t. The words are mostly OK, but there are one too many wibble-wobbly sentence configurations.

This is also a perfect example of a fairly easy story that had one phrase I spent an hour trying to sort out, and a perfect example of the reason I started this blog in the first damn place – you start reading and then one word trips you up and you can’t get past it. 99% sure I figured it out, but don’t hesitate to correct me in the comments if you have intelligence to the contrary. The word was 香草娃娃 xiāng cǎo wá wá. Uh, well, xiāng cǎo means “vanilla” and wá wá is “baby”, so… vanilla baby? Really? In the story, 香草娃娃 is used as a toy’s name, so I thought, maybe there’s a toy called a Vanilla Baby? Anyway, it turns out an out-of-use definition for 香草 is “old and dependable”. Ah hah – “old, dependable baby doll”. That makes sense.

There’s one other very useful phrase here that’s very commonly used in everyday language: 太过分了！Directly translated, this means “Too excessive!”, but this phrase doesn’t usually actually refer to a large amount of things. It’s more often used to refer to a circumstance or someone’s behavior, like, “That is just too much to bear!”. If someone was very mean to you, you could say, “太过分了!” or if an interview process was super rough and you got raked over the coals, also “太过分了!”

Enjoy this one, and consider it good practicing in very colloquial story building.

The new year had almost arrived, and the Toy Kingdom planned to invite everyone to a grand ball. The day of the dance, the toys were all dancing and laughing, and the whole ballroom was extraordinarily lively. But off in one corner, receiving no attention from anyone, there was an old purple doll silently gazing at the dance floor, her eyes were blank and she looked lonely. Just then, a white polar bear in front of her saw this, walked over and asked the dependable old doll, “Doll, why don’t you go dance?” The dependable doll lowered her head sadly, saying in a small voice, “The [other] toys all say I’m too short, they’re not willing to dance with me.” Saying this, she began to cry. Polar Bear was furious when he heard this, and said: “How could they treat you this way? Don’t they understand solidarity? That’s just too much!” Little Bear pulled on the baby doll’s hand, and said: “Doll, don’t be sad. Come on, I’m asking you to dance with me.” The dependable doll heard these words, and a brilliant smile immediately lit up her face. She quickly wiped the tears off her face and said happily, “Wonderful! Wonderful!” On the dance floor, Doll and Bear danced and laughed, and passed a lovely evening together.

I want to learn Mandarin but it looks intimidating. I have heard that there are more than 100,000 Chinese characters to memorize. Some of the words have the same spelling but pronounced differently and they are totally unrelated. I better start studying it now.

Hi Kendra, a few dans ago I just mentioned that there was no update on your blog since a long time. Thanks a lot for the nice story and so happy to be able to continue enjoy reading with your excellent posts!!!